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The Search for Alternative Spiritual Narratives in the Fiction of Randall Kenan, Lee Smith, and Ron Rash

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The Search for Alternative Spiritual Narratives in the Fiction of Randall Kenan, Lee Smith, and Ron Rash WARREN, KAREN WHEELER, Ph.D. Loosening the Bible Belt: The Search for Alternative Spiritual Narratives in the Fiction of Randall Kenan, Lee Smith, and Ron Rash. (2010) Directed by Dr. Scott Romine. 127 pp. In this project I argue for new readings of Randall Kenan’s A Visitation of Spirits and “The Foundations of the Earth,” Lee Smith’s Saving Grace and On Agate Hill , and of Ron Rash’s poetry, short fiction, and his novel Saints at the River as texts that confront religious institutions that have become distanced from this intimate sense of spirituality. They critique religious communities that use their ideology to control sexuality, women, and nature. Of these three authors, Randall Kenan is the most harshly critical of the religious community in his texts. Using sexuality as his primary way into this issue, he highlights the oppressive and silencing force of religion, and offers no spiritual solution to this quandary. His solution centers on a more humanist, secular form of acceptance for those on the margins, specifically those on the margins of sexuality. Lee Smith takes a more positive stance, even while critiquing the role religion plays in repressing female identity and independence. Ron Rash critiques man’s manipulation of and separation from the natural world. He argues for a reconnection to the divinity of nature in which humanity has the potential to find a spiritual connection to something outside and bigger than itself. LOOSENING THE BIBLE BELT: THE SEARCH FOR ALTERNATIVE SPIRITUAL NARRATIVES IN THE FICTION OF RANDALL KENAN, LEE SMITH, AND RON RASH By Karen Wheeler Warren A Dissertation Submitted to The Faculty of The Graduate School at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy Greensboro 2010 Approved by Scott Romine Committee Chair To Jack and Hank ii APPROVAL PAGE This dissertation has been approved by the following committee of the Faculty of The Graduate School at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Committee Chair _________________________________ Scott Romine Committee Members _______________________________ Karen Weyler _______________________________ Elizabeth Chiseri-Strater ____________________________ Date of Acceptance by Committee _________________________ Date of Final Oral Examination iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank Scott Romine, Karen Weyler, and Elizabeth Chiseri-Strater for their advice and guidance during this project. I would also like to thank Ben Ramsey, a latecomer to the project but one whose advice was brutal, simple, and incredibly helpful. To Heidi, Liz, Bethany, and Rita, thank you for all of your advice, encouragement, and support throughout my graduate career. You provided much needed comic relief during my time in Greensboro. I couldn’t have made it without you. To my friends outside academia—Reed and Michael, Cecile and Chris, Kim and Ed, Winn and Aqil, Anna and (yes, you too) Taylor, and the Fernwood gang—thank you for reminding me that there is life outside university walls, and thank you for all the fun we’ve had over the past five years. I would like to express my thanks to and love for my family—Mom, Daddy, Cal, Brandi, Deborah, Butch, Lee, Jason, and Mary Nora. Thank you for all of your support and patience throughout this process. I couldn’t have done it without any of you. And finally, to my husband Grant and my boys Jack and Hank: y’all have been my strength through this whole thing and the reason for seeing it through. Thank you for all of your love, patience, and support. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page CHAPTER INTRODUCTION ………………………………………………………………………..1 I. TOWARD A NEW SPIRITUAL GEOGRAPHY: THE CHANGING ROLE OF RELIGION IN THE FICTION OF RANDALL KENAN …....18 II. “SEARCHING FOR HARD GROUND IN A WORLD OF SHIFTING SANDS”: FINDING FAITH AND NEGOTIATING SPIRITUAL NARRATIVES IN THE FICTION OF LEE SMITH …………………...48 III. “BOTH GRAVE AND RESURRETION GROUND”: THE SEARCH FOR THE SPIRITUAL IN THE WATERS OF RON RASH’S FICTION …..……………………………………………………………..89 CONCLUSION ………………………………………………………………………..116 WORKS CITED ……………………………………………………………………….122 v INTRODUCTION As a child in the South, I was fascinated by the sheer number of churches in my small town of about 9,000 people. Nearly everyone I knew went to church or claimed membership in one of the churches that peppered the street corners of Hartsville, South Carolina. Religion was a part of the very landscape of my town and the neighboring towns all through the Pee Dee region of South Carolina. Not only did the physicality of the churches permeate the culture of the area in which I grew up, but also informed the worldview of the people with whom I worshipped every Sunday. Indeed, the religious community to which I belonged shaped much of the value system in which I operated as a youth. I certainly knew what right and wrong was, because, as the children’s hymn goes, “The Bible tells me so.” The area in which I lived and was raised is not different from many other rural areas of the American South—religion is an important part of what makes the South distinctive, engendering it with a spiritual pervasiveness not found in other parts of the country. When asked why religion is always in the background of much of his fiction, William Faulkner said, “It’s just there. It has nothing to do with how much I might believe or disbelieve—it’s just there” (qtd. in Gwynn and Blotner 86). Indeed, this religious pervasiveness has created a very conservative, moralistic atmosphere in the south, leading journalist H.L.Mencken in 1924 to dub the South “The Bible Belt,” a title that is still used and retains much of its meaning today. The negative implication of this 1 moniker highlights the stranglehold many people feel this conservative religious atmosphere creates for southerners and the South as a region. Despite this negative characterization of the South by Mencken and other writers and critics, religion has remained one of the defining features of the southern ideological landscape. This project explores this religious landscape as seen through the eyes of Randall Kenan, Lee Smith, and Ron Rash, with particular emphasis on the growing separation between religion and spirituality. Wilfred Cantwell Smith discusses this separation in The Meaning and End of Religion, highlighting the four distinct ways we use the term “religion”: first, personal piety; second, the overt system of beliefs, practices, values, etc. as an ideal; third, the same as a historical and sociological phenomenon; and last, the general term “religion” (48 – 9). While this is a gross summation of his discussion, it is important to my project chiefly in terms of the first two uses. This project deals with the increasing gap between the personal fulfillment of religious spirituality and the concrete religious institution. Smith charts the historical shift from describing religion as an adjective—“faith, and its reference to the individual”—to thinking of religion as a noun—Christianity, or Baptist, or Pentecostal, for example (75). He discusses the shift from religion as a space for personal spiritual development to one that denotes the “institutionality” of religion (75 – 9). This idea is the cornerstone of this project, and it is through this lens that I examine and situate my discussion of the fiction of Randall Kenan, Lee Smith, and Ron Rash. Southerners all, they deal with this chasm in different ways and through different vantage points. 1 While the term “spirituality” can mean many things to different people, for this project I define it as a concept that carries at its center deep, often religious, feelings, beliefs, and concepts, including one’s sense of connection to others and the world, sense of purpose, sense of peace, and one’s ideas about life’s meaning. In this project I argue for new readings of Randall Kenan’s A Visitation of Spirits and “The Foundations of the Earth,” Lee Smith’s Saving Grace and On Agate Hill , and Ron Rash’s poetry, short fiction, and his novel Saints at the River as texts that confront religious institutions that have become distanced from this intimate sense of spirituality. They critique religious communities that use their ideology to control sexuality, women, and nature. Of these three authors, Randall Kenan is the most harshly critical of the religious community in his texts. Using sexuality as his primary way into this issue, he highlights the oppressive and silencing force of religion, and offers no spiritual solution to this quandary. Rather, his solution centers on a more humanist, secular form of acceptance for those on the margins, specifically those on the margins of sexuality. Lee Smith takes a more positive stance, even while critiquing the role religion plays in repressing female identity and independence. Her texts show characters seeking to restore spirituality to organized religion, specifically through a reconnection to nature akin to Cleanth Brooks’s idea of Christian synthesis. 1 For Smith, it is only through a reconnection with nature and 1 Cleanth Brooks’s defines the idea of Christian synthesis as the harmonious state of man and nature before the Fall; he further states that although Man was ejected from Eden and separated from this state of harmony with nature, God’s act of grace makes it possible for him to achieve salvation (149). It is the breakdown of this Christian synthesis that Brooks uses in his discussion of Faulkner’s ideological stance on man’s relationship to both God and nature. For more information, see Brooks’s On the Prejudices, Predilections, and Firm Beliefs of William Faulkner . 2 the spiritual powers found there that her female characters can achieve the fulfillment and freedom of identity they so ardently search for throughout her texts.
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